On Pauses Of C-E Consecutive Interpreting

In recent years,consecutive interpreting has been widely used in meetings and business occasions.It is a complex process involving many skills,like listening comprehension,deverbalization,short-term memory,logical analysis.Therefore,it requires interpreters be multi-taskers to handle the whole situation.Generally,scholars and professionals take fluency as an important yardstick to measure interpreters’ output quality.And pause represents a vital factor to evaluate interpreters’ fluency of delivery by them.During this Chinese–English consecutive interpreting practice,the author found that pause was the biggest problem for her to cope with.Hence,the author analyzes the factors causing the pauses in this practice,such as lack of capacity of language reformulation between Chinese and English,the weak ability to filter information and too much time needed for figuring out speakers’ logic,self-correction,decoding notes.And the author tries to come up with relative solutions to reduce pauses,including 1)improving interpreting flexibility;2)filtering information while listening;3)enhancing understanding ability;4)properly arranging notes;5)communicating with clients thoroughly.Pauses are inevitable in the interpreting activities,but interpreters can use some methods to reduce them and make them less obvious.Therefore,the author writes this thesis to help trainee interpreters to raise their awareness of pause control and come up with some suggestions to help improve the fluency of delivery.